Parents are being invited to step in to help improve public education, but they enter with neither resources nor power. Real parental involvement requires commitment to organizing parents and restructuring schools, as well as inventing rich versions of diverse educational democracies of difference. Schools must function like meaningful…

This book presents essays written by school reformers that discuss the reform movement and examine the partnership that inspired the creation of small, intimate school communities known as charters. They also reflect on the comprehensive changes that inform each charter and the personal and collective struggles to institutionalize these new…

This interview with Constance Clayton, superintendent of the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) public schools, and Michelle Fine, professor of psychology and consultant, discusses the Philadelphia Schools Collaborative, a nonprofit organization established to lead the restructuring of the city's high schools. Central to the effort is the concept of…